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GamesCom: Sony To Reveal New PSN And Firmware Update 3.0?

If you thought E3 was big, you may want to pay attention to the upcoming GamesCom event in Cologne, Germany. The more we hear, the more it seems as if Sony is prepared to unleash a barrage of huge announcements.

First of all, we can apparently expect a PlayStation 3 price drop along with the official revealing of the PS3 Slim, and there's a further possibility of a price drop for the initial retail tag affixed to the PSP Go (which currently sits at $249.99). But according to PSInsider, the big news won't stop there: one rumor says Sony will lift the veil on something "for the first time," and evidently, that "something" is the snazzy new PlayStation Network we've been hearing about. As the "inside source" states, this should coincide with the release of firmware update 3.0, which should be fully detailed at Sony's press conference on August 18. There's a good chance we'll see premium features we've never had before, and in addition, let's not forget about that supposed "P.S. Thanks" rewards program Sony presumably has waiting in the hopper. At this point, we'd be happy with a PS3 price cut but perhaps we'll get a whole lot more than we bargained for; perhaps Sony will make announcements that will undoubtedly give them the edge this holiday season. Don't forget the impending software, either.

This is one of those times where we have to be careful about all the rumors and speculation floating around out there. The bottom line is that none of this is official...but it seems damn certain that at least some of it will be true. Cross your fingers...

Out of all the rumours mentioned in the article, for me, I'm awaiting and if they come out true, anticipating FW 3.00 and PS Thanks, as I don't need a PS3 slim (I've had the original PS2 for 5-6 years, i.e. my childhood, and my original PSP for 2 and a half years) as I believe that for the PS consoles, the original model is always the more reliable one.

Here's hoping they announce everything. Given Sony, though, I wouldn't be surprised if they left some things out just to keep us guessing for another several months. If I expect just a couple big announcements, then I'll probably be pretty impressed with what they do announce.

1. the urban dictionary is hardly proof of correct usage 2. if you read that entry, you'll see that someone corrected it 3. I checked the word in the OED before posting, to make sure I had it right

Just because lots of people do something doesn't make it right. Next you'll tell me "rediculous" is a valid spelling or "could care less" makes sense because a bunch of 12-year-old internet pinheads use them.

The only cure for ignorance is education; there is no cure for wilful stupidity.

I have a feeling we'll be seeing a new PSN that we have to pay for (along side what we currently use now) :P People will complain because you'll get exclusive content by paying for it where as we get everything for free now. That would be terrible news :P

I don't think that Sony would risk pissing off that many people by adding a payment system to a portion of the network. Now if it were for things that would not effect gameplay and what not then yes, that would be reasonable. But not for something like voice chat.

i really hope they streamline the in-game xmb. you can't use most of the things in the in-game xmb anyhow. like they could take the videos and photos tabs out seeing as they are useless in game. as well as other things. hell, it doesn't even have to be an xmb, it could have a different look completely.

the in-game xmb doesn't need to load all of my album art and whatnot too. just text would be fine, that way it wouldn't take so long to load. As long as i could navigate it quickly, i would be satisfied.

then we could have things like cross game voice chat and voice messages. and maybe a feature that when someone sends you a message and the PS button is pressed when the little grey box is up, you can be taken straight to the message.

If all of this came true it would make this the best year for Sony and I couldn't possibly see the 360 keeping up. My order for what I would like to see announced would probably be:
1. Price Cut
2. Update 3.0
3. PS3 slim

Yeah. Having a lobby-styled chat in online gaming would be pretty cool. Would help to join games with your friends. As for the sex in games? It's a part of life. Nothing to be ashamed of and yes, it doesn't seem out of place in RPG's.

Premium is another word for paid. Considering the amount of paid video content in the PS Store, I'd say we already have premium content. What if premium content was not game related, but referred to other media? Sony has talked of extending the PSN to other Sony entertainment devices. What if PSN had premium content feeds that included Hulu and/or Netflix?

I hope the PLAYSTATION Network doesn't change much because we only need a party system. Also they should somehow integrate the PSN with Home. Hall Of Fame. And make the web browser a little better. Also i hope they add flash 10 to PSP.

I think they should add some more features or controls but I really like the simplicity of the design vs. NXE or whatever it's called for the 360. Every time I turn on my 360 and go through their interface, I get irked. It's childish, the sounds are horrible, and I just don't like interacting with it.

i hope they do add in BC and hopefully its done better than the original 60GB models.i was playing R&C 3 today and it was so laggy.the was video lagging the audio.like when Quark rings ratchet in his ship you would see quark talking but hear ratchet talking.than at the end of the video the call was over but quark was still talking.even the gameplay is lagging you hit x to jump but it takes 5 seconds or so to actually jump, i hope sony fixes this up otherwise im getting me a ps2.R&C 3 was by far the best in the series i hope A Crack In Time goes back to its style, TOD to me was 3 steps backwards compare to R&C 3.

I just saw your other post, you have the European/rest of the world 60GB unit with the half and half software/hardware BC. They didn't have the original PS3 chips inside. The games that run less well on that system are the games that pushed the PS2 hardware closer to the limit. As far as I can remember Sony have said that any game that abides completely by the PS2 platform development guidelines will run well. But a lot of the later games on PS2, especially the good ones, used a lot of undocumented tricks and shortcuts that exploit the hardware in ways that are not directly supported by the PS2 dev kits. So if a dev makes use of undocumented features, shortcuts or perhaps calls a hardware unit directly instead of using a system call, that may not be well supported (if it works at all) by the BC in those later PS3s. The half and half BC solution was specifically intended to emulate a PS2 well enough that all games that stuck to the rules would work. Unfortunately a lot of games such as R&C3 and GT4 and others use tricks, techniques and methods that so not stick to those rules.

The original 20/60GB NTSC model plays all PS2 games perfectly, it's compatibility is as good as the PS2 slimiline model that the included chipset comes from. Since the games are played by actual PS2 hardware in the US/Japan 20/60GB models, that's not a surprise.

You always seem to be having a significantly worse experience with your PS3 than more or less everyone else. It's just very...curious.Last edited by Highlander on 8/10/2009 10:13:19 AM

first of all,how can anyone say the xmb is hard to use,yeah maybe if youve only got 1 eye and no thumbs.....secondlyto the guy who moaned about his album art taking ages to load up..simple answer..take it off..and lastly,why would firmware 3.0 be just a rumour,lmao,they not gonna jump from 2.8 to lets say 3.1 or 4.1...get a grip guys,anything new from sony is a bonus and most ppl out there are happy with the service they get,things take time.if they gave us everything we wanted in one big lump then ppl would still find something to moan about

I'm just a little worried too many "rumors of confirmations" might get people's hopes up for August 18th and then cause a lot a disappointment if they don't happen then. Now if some of them don't happen by the end of the Tokyo Games Show, people will be peeved regardless of expectations.

I can tell you guys that we have to PS3's in stock anywhere in Australia, and we aren't getting any shipped for 2 weeks. Sony has held back the shipments because they have apparently stopped productions of current models. Coincidence?

i think sony should add some deeper colours to the XMB. I want some solid colours and maybe when you flip between xmb menus like music, video and stuff then make it like a book. not the flipping but i don't really like the simple look it has now. i know i will get a lot of hate on this tho.

don't know what they did to the PSN several months ago but suddenly i went from it taking several hours at times to download a very small item and constant lag that made online play in games like burnout impossible, to constant, very fast speeds so something was upgraded somewhere (and i didn't do anything to my router/firewall along the way).

Sony made a few changes to the way in which the Friends list and status is cached and populated when you logon. They also streamlined the PSN and Home clients that run on the PS3 to be more efficient, and cache more locally.

The friends list changes were a god send, because there had been a previous change intended to increase the size of the friends list that caused problems in a lot of games. The problems were especially bad if you had a full friends list.

Burnout Paradise was one of the games most affected by the friends list issue. If you had a friends list near or at the limit ( 100 friends max) the game would be slow and actually freeze up. IIRC it used to happen if you'd just started up your PS3 and went into your game while your PS3 was still updating your friends list. The PS3 would be working away in the background to update all the status information for your friends. If you tried to use the in-game XMB to access your friends list, or used friends list options in the game, it could lock up - effectively waiting forever for the friends data to update. Also you'd see frame rate dips and other performance problems while the PS3 was updating the friends information.

Sony made more changes to the way the friends list is presented to games and users, and also made the process of updating the list and status of friends far more efficient, so that there is no impact on game performance. So things are better. Although, it now takes a bit longer for your friends list status to update...games run better.

Sony can't do much about network lag. Burnout Paradise runs P2P with the servers only handling the collection of statistics. Lag in that game was purely down to each PS3 in use and the network performance of the users. Sony may have improved their wireless networking code which would specifically help wireless LAN users with lag. Overall though lag issues in Burnout Paradise were helped more by Criterion enhancing the game to cope better with lag.Last edited by Highlander on 8/10/2009 10:28:28 AM

Hi people, (...1st post)I'm rather new to the PS3(got it this past March), so there's quite a bit I still have to discover. In reading some of the posts, many of you have experienced problems, solved them, and generally seem friendly thru it all. I have a question. I know I can send pics to my friends in messages, but I can't send mp3s regardless of size. Maybe I missed something in the manual. Could someone tell me if there is a way to send songs to someone on my friends list, or if it's in the works? Thanks in advance.